Telecommunications and digital solutions company, Globacom, is giving 15% bonus airtime on every E-top-up transaction. Customers who use digital airtime recharge services are best placed to take advantage of this interesting new offer.

Globacom clarified in a press release released in Lagos that the promotion, which began on February 13, is exclusively accessible to specific prepaid Glo users.

The company noted that in line with its commitment to delivering exceptional value to customers, “we have introduced this bonus airtime promotion to help our customers get the most out of their mobile experience. Whether the airtime is used for calls, data, or messaging, this extra boost ensures that customers stay connected with their loved ones and colleagues without interruption. It was introduced to give our esteemed customers unprecedented value for money and a delightful calling experience on the Glo network”.

Glo is offering the 15% airtime incentive on recharges as part of the company’s package to bring more excitement to the daily lives of millions of Nigerians on the Glo E-top up platform. Segmented prepaid subscribers can simply use E-top up to recharge N200 or more and the bonus can be used to make calls to any network.

“The validity of the airtime is 7 days and cannot be rolled over; once the bonus airtime is not used within validity period, it expires and the customer forfeits the bonus”, Globacom explained.

Customers can recharge airtime with ease and convenience using the E-top up platform, whether they’re at home or on the go as they can use Glo digital channels, such as the website, mobile app, or USSD codes, to top-up and get 15% extra airtime right away.

Globacom urged Nigerians to take advantage of the exceptional deal and get 15% more airtime.

The Federal Government of Nigeria and the International Telecommunication Union have called for global collaboration to address the increasing disruptions and damages to submarine cables.

They warned that such incidents pose a threat to the growth and sustainability of the digital economy worldwide.

Speaking at the International Submarine Cable Resilience Summit, hosted by Nigeria in Abuja on Wednesday, the Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, called for global efforts to prioritise submarine cable resilience, describing the issue as a strategic imperative that affects multiple sectors.

Tijani said, “Under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, Nigeria is committed to strengthening its digital infrastructure and advancing policies that support connectivity, innovation, and economic growth.

“We are taking decisive steps as a nation to recognise and protect the government’s infrastructure as critical national infrastructure, aligning with our broader efforts to enhance digital resilience across all sectors.

“As a government, we are also deeply invested in leveraging digital property infrastructure, promoting global access, and expanding broadband penetration, ensuring that connectivity remains a catalyst for economic transformation and revolution.

“The outcomes of this summit will not only influence policy and investment decisions but also serve as the foundation for global cooperation and long-term resilience.”

Also speaking, the Secretary-General of ITU, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, stressed the need for urgent measures to safeguard submarine cable networks, which form 95 per cent of global digital connectivity infrastructure.

Bogdan-Martin noted that the digital economy has grown exponentially, now accounting for a significant portion of the world’s Gross Domestic Product.

She projected that the sector would be worth $16.5tn by 2028, outpacing overall global GDP growth.

“Since the 2005 World Summit on the increasing society, the number of internet users back then in 2005 stood at one billion. At the end of last year, we had 5.5 billion internet users and today, the global digital economy is growing faster than global GDP and is expected to reach 16.5 trillion U.S. dollars by 2028.

“Over the next decade, some estimates that more than two-thirds of the new value creation could come from digitally-enabled companies. As our economies and digital innovations grow, and as we seek to bring meaningful connectivity to all, so does our reliance on digital infrastructure like submarine cables.

“This global undersea network is emblematic of the innovation and the investment required to connect the world meaningfully,” she said.

Bogdan-Martin raised concerns over the frequency of submarine cable disruptions, revealing that an estimated 200 incidents occur annually, making repairs across continents complex and time-consuming.

She added that these disruptions affect economies globally, as submarine cables are integral to finance, trade, education, health, and governance.

She commended Nigeria for hosting the summit, urging the ITU advisory board, academia, and key stakeholders to develop a strategy that strengthens the resilience of undersea cable infrastructure.

At the event, the Co-Chair of the ITU Advisory Board, Sandra Maximiano, stressed the critical role of submarine cable businesses in the global economy.

Maximiano noted that recent developments in the industry had brought greater awareness to the need for enhanced security and redundancy in subsea networks.

“It is no coincidence that we are meeting here in Abuja today, given that several cable cuts occurred in March last year affecting multiple countries in West Africa, including Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, and Senegal.

“This incident highlighted the critical importance of subsea cable businesses in this region, with some estimates indicating that over 70 million customers were infected.

“While Nigeria is served by several submarine cable systems, many of which also land in my home country, Portugal, including MainOne, Africa Coast to Europe, and Equiano to Africa, other Western African countries. They are served by only a single submarine cable,” Maximiano said.

The two-day summit attracted over 300 delegates from ITU’s 194 member countries, bringing together government representatives, telecom operators, policymakers, and technology experts to discuss strategies for protecting global undersea cable networks.

Also present at the event were the Executive Vice-Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Dr Aminu Maida; the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Faruk Yabo; the Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency, Malam Kashifu Inuwa; the National Commissioner of the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, Dr Vincent Olatunji; and the Managing Director of NigComSat, Mrs Jane Egerton-Idehen.

Google has unveiled Gemini Code Assist for individuals, a free version of their AI-coding assistant. This development assistant powered by Gemini 2.0 is now available to Nigerian developers and it supports all programming languages in the public domain and more importantly, it is optimised for coding.

Recent DORA research indicates that over 75% of developers now integrate AI into their daily workflows, underscoring its growing importance. At Google, for instance, over 25% of new code is AI-generated, subsequently validated by engineering teams.

While established enterprises readily deploy advanced AI tools to enhance developer productivity, access to these resources has historically been limited for students, independent developers, and emerging startups. Given the projected global developer base expansion to 57.8 million by 2028, democratising AI access is both timely and crucial. Providing these tools, regardless of financial capacity, equips the next generation of developers with the essential digital capabilities required for future innovation.

The Gemini 2.0 model was fine-tuned for developers by analysing and validating a large number of real-world coding use cases. As a result, the quality of AI-generated recommendations in Gemini Code Assist is better than ever before and ready to address the myriad of daily challenges developers face. While other popular free coding assistants have restrictive usage limits, with usually only 2,000 code completions per month, Gemini Code Assist offers practically unlimited capacity with up to 180,000 code compilations per month – a high standard that is seldom reached by even the most dedicated professional developers.

AI is revolutionising coding, not only by accelerating code writing but also by empowering developers to write better code. While a quality and efficient code review process is critical, code reviews are often time-consuming. To address this, the public preview of Gemini Code Assist for GitHub, which provides free, AI-powered code reviews for both public and private repositories.

Developers spend most of their time coding in integrated development environments (IDEs). Now, the free version of Gemini Code Assist in Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IDEs offers developers the same code completion, generation, and chat capabilities that have been available to businesses for over a year, and are already freely available in Firebase and Android Studio. This provides an opportunity for anyone to conveniently learn, create code snippets, debug, and modify their existing applications, all within their IDE, eliminating the need to toggle between windows or copy and paste from disconnected sources.

With the most generous usage limit of 90 times, more code completions per month than other popular free coding assistants, coders have a huge opportunity, whether as a student working on a time-sensitive project, there would be no need to worry about chat limits stopping pair – programming sessions or dealing with stalling because you hit a cap.

Gemini Code Assist for individuals comes with a generous token context window, with up to 128,000 input token support in chat. This large context window lets developers use large files and ground Gemini Code Assist with a broader understanding of their local codebases.

The chat feature also makes it easy for developers to focus on the creative part of development, while leaving the necessary, but repetitive steps – like writing comments or automated tests from requirements – to Gemini.

Caption: Gemini Code Assist provides a summary of a pull request and improvement suggestions. Then, when prompted, Gemini provides code readability suggestions.

Nigerian developers can use natural language in a variety of languages in Gemini Code Assist to generate, explain and improve code. For example, a freelance website developer could quickly get code with a prompt like, “Build me a simple HTML form with fields for name, email, and message, and then add a ‘submit’ button.” Or someone just looking to automate more routine tasks can ask Gemini to “Write a script that sends a daily email with the latest weather forecast,” or “Explain what this Python code snippet does and find any errors.”

Code review is one of the most critical, albeit time consuming, parts of software development. With Gemini Code Assist for GitHub, Nigerian developers get a powerful helping hand that can detect stylistic issues and bugs and automatically suggest code changes and fixes. Offloading basic reviews to an AI agent can help make code repositories more maintainable and improve quality, allowing developers to focus on more complex tasks. It’s available directly in GitHub, where most open-source developers post and review code, via a GitHub app.

Different developer teams may also have different best practices, coding conventions and preferred frameworks and libraries. To address this need, Gemini Code Assist for GitHub supports custom style guides for code reviews. Each team can describe which instructions Gemini should follow when reviewing code in a .gemini/styleguide.md file in their repository. That way, Gemini tailors its code reviews to the needs of the repository.

Whether a student building an interactive data visualization using JavaScript, or a freelance developer testing ideas for an application or game, you can use Gemini Code Assist to help you get your project done faster, with more expertise, at no cost.

Signup is quick and easy, and only requires a personal Gmail account, no credit card needed. Nigerian developers can get started by installing Gemini Code Assist in Visual Studio Code, GitHub or JetBrains IDEs.

With user feedback on this public preview, Google will continue to fine-tune Gemini Code Assist. Users can share feedback right from the “Send feedback” form in the IDE or in GitHub. Nigerian developers interested in advanced functionality such as productivity metrics, customised AI responses based on private source code repositories, or integrations with Google Cloud services like BigQuery can also consider Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise.